


everything stays

by ausditl (zamothac)



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Future Fic, M/M, Reunion, Unanswered Questions™️, not angst exactly but a lil bit sad, there is like a two-sentence sex scene if that's something that's important for you to know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-28
Updated: 2016-11-28
Packaged: 2018-09-02 19:16:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8680195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zamothac/pseuds/ausditl
Summary: they find each other again after decades apart. it's the same. it's unbearably different.





	

they fall back into orbit around each other but it's different. they're different. 

phil takes his coffee with just one sugar now, and dan has to remind himself not to load it up the way his muscle memory begs him to. 

sometimes phil just looks at dan, when he thinks he can't see him. he drinks in the sight of dan sunning himself in the garden - their garden? - as though it's something unfamiliar but beautiful. like sunrise on a new continent. 

he wishes he knew where every wrinkle came from, who caused the smiles that carved his crow's feet, what made him frown the tiny line between his eyebrows. these aren't the drawn-on lines of a sketch-comedy teacher anymore, they're the map to a life that phil wasn't there for. 

the flat is echoey when they move back in - "retro", the estate agent calls it with a smile. "well-looked-after". "well-loved". dan rests a hand on the empty doorframe of the kitchen, thinks about that bloody glass door that used to almost lie in wait for him, looks at the gleamingly new tiles with no cracks in them at all. 

they both have pictures, framed on the mantelpiece or tucked away in drawers, that they don't talk about. a polaroid of a hill in scotland with the sun dappling it like honey stirred through water, and the faintest suggestion of a person waving from the peak. someone with sad blue eyes grinning in a european street. a lounge room, cluttered, empty in a way that suggests whoever left is standing just out of shot, waiting to come back. 

sometimes dan feels like an insect trying helplessly to cram itself back into its moulted exoskeleton, and on days like that he can't be around phil, has to go lose himself in the crowds at paddington station or dangle his feet perilously off a bridge or lie in an anonymous park and stare at the emptily blue sky. 

they kiss the same. that hasn't changed. 

phil presses kisses down dan's neck and dan melts underneath him like they're still eighteen and twenty-two and buzzing from on-camera chemistry. dan's voice is a little cracked now but his moans are just as sweet and when he tenses and gasps and comes over his own stomach like he's been waiting for it for years phil can hardly breathe for shock and joy and an overwhelming sense of awe. 

sometimes dan talks to himself in his sleep - never anything phil understands. sometimes phil absently taps out unfamiliar patterns down dan's spine. 

they're the same. they're so different they sometimes wonder if they're speaking the same language. they're faded and battered and awkward sometimes but finally they're growing together again, two vines wrapped around the same tree. they relearn each other. they live.

**Author's Note:**

> inspiration and title taken from the song of the same name (https://youtu.be/Vu_oJR2psGY)


End file.
